20 Minute Run

I have an aweful habit of sleeping in way past my alarm. I hit snooze at least 6 times a day. But the thing is, when I actually wake up in the morning, I have no idea that I ever hit the snooze button, let alone 6 times in a row. I blame most of that on my heavy sleeping. A tornado could plow through my backyard, but if I was sleeping I would never know. Once I am asleep, there is almost no chance of actually waking me up. There have been occasions, for example, when my phone will ring in the middle of the night after I've long been asleep and I will answer. I'm still asleep and manage to mumble and grumble a few sentences sure to confuse and humor the caller on the other end, who by now realizes I am sleep talking and hangs up. In the morning I am the one confused when I find my cell phone under my pillow and my call log says that I had a 20 minute phone call at 3:30 in the morning.

Well today, day 2 of habit 1, I not only hit snooze for an hour before accidentally turning off my alarm all together, but aparently I also sat up and talked to my roommate when she came in to make sure I would get up for class. Of course, I never got up for class and woke up around 11, realized that I missed both of my morning lectures, and rolled back over. The next time I looked at the clock it was 1 pm. I couldn't believe it. I have sleeping issues. Not only did I not have a productive morning, I didn't have a morning at all! You best believe that this sleeping habit is next on my twenty-one days list. Anyway, Andrew and I went for our run this afternoon, you know, because this morning did not exist. The schedule called for a 20 minute run. Wasn't too bad. We both had Frosted Flakes right before running though, won't ever do that again. Yuck :( We've added stretching to our before and after running routine, not an official twenty-one day habit, but its usually a good idea to stretch.

River Bank Run

I heard somewhere that it takes twenty-one days to make or break a habit. Twenty-one days and you are golden. Now, it has to be twenty-one days in a row. If you miss one day, you start the count over. Those are the rules.
Here are the tips. Only tackle one habit at a time. If you try and tackle making 10 new habits and breaking 12 all in the same twenty-one day time span, you will be restarting that count until the day you die. It's tempting to do, but stop. Look at your long list of habits, pick one and start with it. Believe me, that one habit will be plenty to tackle all on its own.

My first habit: go for a run every day. You wouldn't believe how many times I've tried to tackle this one. A couple of summers ago I was doing really great, I got up and ran every morning before work. Then, being the graceful one I am, I sprained my ankle jumping off of a horse in the woods. So much for running. My ankle healed and I started again, only to give up when an extra hour of sleep before a long day of work took priority over a nice long jog. Anyway, feeling insecure about my inability to run long distances, or any distance for that matter, without wanting to die, along with feeling insecure about my weight, figure, etc. and of course being concerned for my health... I decided to give it another go. This time with a little extra motivation. I am training to run a 25 K in the 2010 Fifth Third River Bank Run. http://www.53riverbankrun.com/ I have never ran in any official race, and this one is close to home, so why not? They have a training schedule that starts, well, today. I printed the one for beginners and each day there is a different running workout. All I have to do is check the schedule, tie my shoes and go. I also managed to rope my boyfriend into running this race with me. So we went for our first run this morning after church. A 1 mile easy run. It was great. One day down, twenty more to go.